EDITORIAL: Hurricanes & oil spills a bad combo

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. _ The mad scramble to contain the oil spill along the Gulf Coast is reaching an even more critical juncture: a race against time as hurricane season fast approaches.

Tar balls have already begun washing up on Alabama's Dauphin Island while Mississippi and Louisiana coastal areas are beginning to see more oil coming ashore.

Hurricane season runs from June through November.

Nature mostly holds the cards on this one. And as we've seen with recent tornado outbreaks, floods and the volcano in Iceland that created havoc for world air travel, we're largely at her mercy.

So we understand any edginess from Gulf Coast residents as the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season gets under way.

Even a tropical storm could uproot anchored oil booms from the floor of Mobile Bay, providing an open door for storm surges to slather bayfront communities with hazardous crude.

A hurricane's forming in the Gulf in June is not out of the question. Weather data shows most tropical storms that form in June tend to develop in the Gulf of Mexico or near the Southeast coast of the U.S., as opposed to later in the season when the formation zones shift into the Atlantic.

But even if a hurricane does not hit immediately, the oily sheen can inflict extreme damage on coastal wetlands by killing plants that protect those fragile lands from erosion.

Alabama, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana are buffered by a string of barrier islands that provide the first line of defense against Gulf storms.

The spreading oil is causing fits for relief workers. Efforts to cap the gushing oil leak a mile below the ocean's surface have proved a technical nightmare.

Standard oil booms used to contain the spread have been largely ineffective, although officials and volunteers must keep trying. Other types of booms, including heavy grade barriers that ride several feet below the surface and are anchored to the sea bottom, are being installed across Mobile Bay and other coastal areas.

Work crews are frantically trying to install sand berms to mitigate damage from the oil spill should it breach containment efforts further offshore. Chemical dispersants are being spread by air to break up the oil and dilute it into the ocean at large. But that has environmental consequences as well.

Strange as it seems, the otherwise disastrous oil spill in the Gulf could have an upside. Some experts believe the oil could help slow the likelihood of a hurricane forming by putting a barrier between the atmosphere and the ocean.

"The oil would have the effect of suppressing evaporation of ocean water into the air," said Dennis Feltgen, meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center. Tropical storms need warm ocean water to fuel their development.

But Feltgen emphasized the effect would be only in the formation of a storm. Once wind speeds exceed 40 mph, the oil's effect would be moot as the storm's stronger winds and the affected currents would break apart the thin layer of oil, he said.

The real-life drama continues in the Gulf to battle what could be the world's biggest ever oil spill.

Its effects will be felt for decades with enormous, perhaps irreversible, damage to plants and animals throughout the food chain, not to mention the economic blow to tourism and fishing.

It's a travesty of monumental proportions. Let's hope Mother Nature does her part and gives us a break this hurricane season.